The Last Boiled Egg Recipe You’ll Ever Need
To know me is to know I love to cook, but while I’ve mastered some pretty complicated cooking techniques over the years, one seemingly simple recipe has eluded me: how to boil an egg. Sure, it seems simple, but all the boiled egg connoisseurs out there (Is there a Facebook group for that?) know how difficult it can be to get the process exactly right- After all, a perfectly boiled egg must have a creamy yet firm center, with no gray ring around it. A perfectly boiled egg must have a shell that basically falls off when you crack it, resulting in a beautifully smooth white surface. A perfectly boiled egg is something that’s been hit or miss for me, for years.
Until now.
After trying out dozens of “no-fail” tips, tricks, hints, and methods and getting spotty results, I have FINALLY mastered the art of boiling an egg– and today, I’m sharing my secrets with you. Here’s how you do it.
1. Run enough water in a pot to cover your eggs, but don’t put the eggs in yet! A good rule of ‘thumb’ (heh) is to run enough water to cover your thumb inside the pot. Salt the water if you’d like.
2. Bring that water to a full boil- Then, and only then, take your eggs out of the refrigerator and gently place them in the pot. I use a cooking spoon with a long handle to put my eggs in the water without breaking them or burning myself.
3. Turn down the heat to a very gentle simmer and let the eggs cook this way for 11 minutes.
4. Remove from the pot and place the eggs in ice water. This helps stop the cooking process in its tracks and cools the eggs down quickly so that they’re ready to peel quickly.
5. Peel and enjoy! You will find that the shell comes right off with no problem.
This method is totally different from the (many, many, many) other ‘perfect boiled egg’ recipes I’ve tried, and it works far better for me. Give it a try yourself- Then use those eggs to make this recipe, which is one of my faves:
Bon appetit!
any time that I have put cold eggs in boiling water, they immediately crack 🙁
The key for me has been to put them in very, very gently. Using a long handled spoon and going slow works well for me. 🙂
Also, my Facebook readers are saying now that newer eggs crack more easily when boiling and older eggs (a week or more old) are better for boiling. So there’s that. 😀
I’ll have to try. The method I use is bringing the water to a boil with the eggs in it, turn off the heat and let sit for 30 minutes. This would shave off some time.
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I just had this discussion with my mom this weekend. I can cook and bake almost anything but boiling an egg requires me to google how every time! Thanks!
Oh, I was so excited to try this. I followed the directions exactly, but after my eggs were well cooled, I cracked one open. Splat! All over the counter went uncooked egg. Maybe it was the thickness of the shells on the organic eggs that threw things off. Oh well, at least I only made 4 of them and not a whole dozen!
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